Bozelko column: World Press Freedom Day important during pandemic

Chandra Bozelko More Content Now

Friday

May 1, 2020 at 8:50 AMMay 1, 2020 at 8:50 AM

Columns share an author’s personal perspective.*****

No one can lock down the American penchant to pin a tale on a perp. Whenever a horrid event unfolds, we search the scene for the story that assigns blame to someone. If it isn’t someone’s fault, then it didn’t happen.

At times, it’s easy. Mass shootings, by their nature, have identifiable perpetrators. A trauma like 9/11 trots out passport photos like mug shots. We can trace environmental disasters like the one in 1986 in Chernobyl back to errors which aren’t divine, but human.

Right now we want to know whose fault it is that the United States accounts for one-third of the world’s COVID-19 cases and now over 63,000 deaths.

First it was China. Then it was the World Health Organization. A recent person of interest is President Donald Trump. A Washington Post columnist is even dropping a dime on former Vice President Joe Biden.

Why the novel coronavirus hit such momentum and caught us unprepared isn’t because of a person; it’s a practice of suppressing speech.

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, and we need to pay more attention in 2020 than any other year. Stories about press freedom across the globe circle around those journalists being criminally charged for simply investigating the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 300 people in 40 countries have been arrested for allegedly sharing COVID-19 falsehoods. Zubir Ahmed, a freelancer in India, was arrested after he asked over Twitter why a family was forcibly quarantined after speaking to a COVID-19-positive person over the phone.

Concentrating on what happens to professional journalists is critical, but casting this cornerstone of civic life as only a journalist’s right to report stories is a fail. For one, police have jacked up regular citizens for complaining about lack of personal protective equipment or contagious people who aren’t quarantining.

But more importantly, the principle behind a free press isn’t journalists’ right to do their jobs; press freedom is ultimately about the audience’s right to know the facts.

And that’s why suppressing the speech of doctors during a deadly pandemic is a human rights violation equal to beating up and arresting reporters.

A doctor in China was reprimanded in December after alerting her superiors and colleagues of a SARS-like virus developing in her patients. Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, gave an interview in March about it and said: “If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand. I would have f***ing talked about it to whoever, where ever I could.” Dr. Ai is now reported missing and is feared to have been detained, but no news outlet has reported any updates on her since the beginning of April. That we don’t know where she is and no one has followed up on this is a defeat for press freedom by itself.

Arguably, our curves may have been flatter had China respected Dr. Ai’s speech. But it’s not just countries far away. It’s happened elsewhere, even here in the United States.

Severe consequences have followed American doctors’ honoring the public right to know by exercising their right to speak. One emergency room physician in Washington was fired after posting about a lack of personal protective equipment on his personal Facebook feed. A colleague of mine who trains nurses to write said the “gag order by employers had really controlled the messaging.” These orders were also reported in news and opinion pieces by NPR, The New York Times and The Hill. YouTube removed a video of two doctors making unorthodox complaints about shelter-at-home edicts.

The blame game is easier to win when the perp is a person rather than a practice; we can punish that soul, toss them in prison, fire or deplatform them and convince ourselves that justice has been achieved.

But when it’s a practice that’s caused trouble, the only way to confine it is to change it - and ourselves. On this World Press Freedom Day, I hope we do.

Chandra Bozelko writes the award-winning blog Prison Diaries. You can follow her on Twitter at @ChandraBozelko and email her at outlawcolumn@gmail.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.